From Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Pace, John (b. c.1523, d. in or before 1592), scholar and court jester, was probably the son of John Pace, a brother of Richard Pace (1483?-1536), secretary to Henry VIII, diplomat, and humanist. In 1522 the elder John Pace received ‘license to exercise by deputy the office of customer … in the port of Lynne’ and ‘to keep, buy and sell ships, and negociate as to the freightage of ships’. He was then a London resident, and owned ‘lands and offices’ estimated at the yearly value of £40, 100 marks (LP Henry VIII, 3.2, 889, 1052). Richard Pace informs us that, in 1527, his brother John had a ‘wife and children’ (ibid., 4.2, 1472), but their names are unknown. John Pace the younger studied at Eton College and was afterwards elected to King's College, Cambridge. In 1539 he is described as a ‘went away Fellow’ at the latter institution (Harwood, 157), although John Heywood, a contemporary satirist, credits him with a master of arts degree (Camden, 266). However, Pace, who was known for his caustic wit, abandoned his scholarly career to become a court jester, in which capacity he was ‘appointed’ to Henry VIII (Harwood, 157) and then to the duke of Norfolk. To those contemporaries who were outraged ‘that Pace being a maister of Arte had disgraced himselfe with wearing a fooles coate’, John Heywood presumably indicated that ‘it is lesse hurtfull to the common-weale, when wise men goe in fooles coates, than when fooles goe in wise mens gownes’ (Camden, 266). Pace's religious affiliation has been subject to debate. Cole believes that he ‘retained his integrity’ as a Roman Catholic (Cole, fols. 26v–27). To this attests an anecdote included in Cardinal Allen's Apologie for the English colleges, an anti-protestant pamphlet written and published in exile in 1581, as a response to Queen Elizabeth's two recent proclamations issued against the English Catholics studying in foreign seminaries. After blaming his adversaries for their attempts to ‘forbid the entering, having, or reading’ Catholic books, Allen relates that ‘madde Pace meeting one day with M. Juel [John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury] … saluted his L. courtly, and said, Now my Lord, quoth he, you may be at rest with these felowes [the Catholics], for you are quit by Proclamation’ (Allen, 58v). Pace's anachronistic remark (Jewel had died in 1571) served to voice Allen's disapproval of the queen's legal ban on Catholic books. Doran maintains that Pace was, on the contrary, a supporter of the protestant movement, although he himself questions the reliability of the story which supports his view (Doran, 164–6). Whatever his religious credo might have been, Pace remained hostile to Queen Elizabeth. Francis Bacon, who coined the name Bitter Fool for Pace, relates in his Apophthegmes New and Old (1625) that Pace, who had been kept away from the queen because of his acerbity, was admitted one day before her, at the insistence of her courtiers, ‘undertaking for him that he should keep compass’. But when the queen said: ‘Come on, Pace: now we shall hear of our faults’, Pace uninhibitedly replied: ‘I do not use to talk of that that all the town talks of’ (Rogeri Bacon opera, 330). His witty sayings earned Pace the reputation of an authority in satirical literature. In his pamphlet Pierce Penilesse (1592) Thomas Nashe includes Pace among famous ‘Orators and Poets’, such as ‘Machevill’, ‘Tully’ (Cicero), Ovid, Roscius, and Robert Greene (Nashe, 1). In the prologue to the tragedy Thorney Abbey, or, The London Maid, by ‘T. W.’ (1662), the Fool nostalgically calls ‘Pacy’ one of his ‘venerable predecessors’ (Welsford, 249). Pace is mentioned again in a nineteenth-century historical account of anecdotal literature (GM, 410). Pace had died by 1592, for Nashe, in Pierce Penilesse, includes the ‘Ghost of … Pace, the Duke of Norfolks Jester’ among those to whom he claims to have dedicated ‘epistles’ (Nashe, 1). Olga Anna Duhl Sources DNB · T. Harwood, Alumni Etonenses, or, A catalogue of the provosts and fellows of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, from the foundation in 1443 to the year 1797 (1797) · M. Davies, Athenae Britannicae, 6 vols. (1716–19), vol. 1, pt 1 · LP Henry VIII, vols. 3/2, 4/2, 13/2 · Wood, Ath. Oxon., new edn, vol. 1 · Cooper, Ath. Cantab., vol. 1 · T. Nashe, Pierce Penilesse, his supplication to the divell, ed. G. B. Harrison (1924) · W. Allen, An apologie and true declaration of the institution and endevours of two English colleges, the one in Rome, the other now resident in Rhemes (1581); repr. (1971) · W. Camden, Remains concerning Britain, ed. R. D. Dunn (1984) · The works of Francis Bacon, ed. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, 14 vols. (1857–74), vol. 13 · E. Welsford, The fool: his social and literary history (1966) · J. Doran, The history of court fools (1858); repr. (1966) · W. Cole, ‘King's College historiettes’, BL, Add. MS 5815, fols. 26v–27 · GM, 1st ser., 90/2 (1820), 406–10 © Oxford University Press 2004–5 All rights reserved: see legal notice Olga Anna Duhl, ‘Pace, John (b. c.1523, d. in or before 1592)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21064, accessed 25 Sept 2005] John Pace (b. c.1523, d. in or before 1592): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21064